Beach maintenance and cleaning vehicles of the generic type are known from the prior art, inter alia from DE 101 13 702 A1. They serve to clean beaches, in particular to clean sand beaches. The functional principle of such beach maintenance and cleaning vehicles of the generic type provides for an upper layer of the underlying surface, for example therefore sand of a sand beach, to be raised up by the pick-up and be guided over a screen belt. Said screen belt allows clean sand and relatively small stones to fall through it, while contaminants are conveyed further by the screen belt and therefore pass into the receiving container and not back onto the beach.
The beach maintenance and cleaning vehicles of the generic type which are currently used have proven to be reliable tools for beach cleaning. However, the result of their work is not completely satisfactory if the underlying surface is damp, since this leads to relatively large sand lumps which are likewise conveyed by means of the screen belt undesirably into the receiving container. A similar situation applies if beach maintenance and cleaning vehicles of the generic type are to be operated with a comparatively great working depth. The underlying surface which is raised up here also forms sand lumps which pass undesirably via the screen belt into the receiving container. Said sand lumps reduce the receiving volume of the receiving container for actual contaminants and lead to the permanent removal of beach substrate.
Although it is known to cause the screen belt of a beach maintenance and cleaning vehicle of the generic type to vibrate by means of a oscillating device, in order to bring about more reliable separation of the contaminants from the uncontaminated sand, the results which are achieved by an oscillating device of this type are still in need of improvement. Despite the oscillating device, too much sand passes into the receiving container.